Barmintseva, A. E. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2018

Phylogeny, phylogeography and hybridization of Caucasian barbels of the genus Barbus (Actinopterygii, Cyprinidae)

The phylogenetic relationships and the phylogeography of seven species of Caucasian barbels of the genus Barbus s. str. were studied based on extended geographic coverage and the use of mtDNA and nDNA markers. Based on the 26 species studied, matrilineal phylogeny of the genus Barbus is composed of two clades: a) West European clade, and b) Central and East European clade. The latter comprises two subclades: b1) Balkanian subclade, and b2) Ponto-Caspian subclade, which includes 11 lineages mainly from Black and Caspian Sea drainages. Caucasian barbels are not monophyletic and are subdivided into two groups. The Black Sea group encompasses species from tributaries of the Black Sea, including the reinstalled B. rionicus, except for B. kubanicus. The Caspian group includes B. ciscaucasicus, B. cyri (with B. goktschaicus, which might be synonymized with B. cyri), B. lacerta from the Tigris-Euphrates basin and B. kubanicus from the Kuban basin. The genetic structure of Black Sea barbels was influenced by glaciation-deglaciation periods accompanied by freshwater phases, periods of migration and the colonization of Black Sea tributaries. Intra- and intergeneric hybridization among Caucasian barbines was revealed for the first time. In the present study, we report the discovery of B. escherichii in the Kuban basin, where only B. kubanicus was known to inhabit. Hybrids of these two species were detected based on both mtDNA and nDNA markers. Remarkably, the Kuban population of B. escherichii is distant to closely located conspecific populations, and we consider it as a relic. We reveal the intergeneric hybridization between evolutionary tetraploid (2n=100) B. goktschaicus and evolutionary hexaploid (2n=150) Capoeta sevangi in Lake Sevan.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Architecture of parallel adaptation to freshwater in multiple populations of threespine stickleback

Threespine sticklebacks adapted to freshwater environments all over the Northern Hemisphere. This adaptation involved parallel recruitment of freshwater alleles in clusters of closely linked sites, or divergence islands (DIs). However, it is unclear to what extent the DIs involved in adaptation and the alleles within them coincide between populations adapting to similar environments. Here, we examine 10 freshwater populations of similar ages from the White Sea basin, and study the repeatability of patterns of adaptation in them. Overall, the 65 detected DIs tend to reside in regions of low recombination, underlining the role of reduced recombination in their establishment. Moreover, the DIs are clustered in the genome to the extent that is not explainable by the recombination rate alone, consistent with the divergence hitchhiking model. 21 out of the 65 DIs are universal; i.e., the frequency of freshwater alleles in them is increased in all analyzed populations. Universal DIs tend to have longer core region shared between populations, and the divergence between the marine and the freshwater haplotypes in them is higher, implying that they are older, also consistently with divergence hitchhiking. Within most DIs, the same set of sites distinguished the marine and the freshwater haplotypes in all populations; however, in some of the DIs, the genetic architecture of the freshwater haplotype differed between populations, suggesting that they could have been established by soft selective sweeps.

evolutionary biology↗